Category: Peace-spreading

Discerning God’s presence

~ phroneticchristian ~ Leave a comment

Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”  – John 9:37

This blog is about discerning God’s presence. He is here in everyday life, revealing himself to people. Even those who might not recognize it. God is making all things new, and everything in our daily routine – even its mundanity and sameness – is divinely preparatory to experiencing the truly real.  

I’m intent on knowing Jesus Christ as the destination of my inner longing. It began with a crisis of confidence in the terse doctrinal system drilled into my adolescent brain; namely that the world mostly contains people for whom there is no redemptive possibility. It preached that the only true belief was that an unalterable divine decree precluded the majority of humanity to have any opportunity whatsoever of living eternally with Him. Since Adam and Eve, men and women remain accursed and utterly without God, because pervasive sin makes people so filthy that they are repulsive to God.  We humans, have been stripped of our divine likeness. Irrespective of Christ’s mission to “preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind”, some, so they said, are unsaveable.  Hence, there is no point in bothering to share God’s reconciling love in Jesus Christ with the already-damned. God, according to the founding father of this particular movement, “determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms”.  

Nothing could be more cruelly bereft of God’s mercy and love. Like many Christians, we sought good grades on the Great Commission. But we flunked the commandment to love people in a way that makes them feel loved. It is reminiscent of the Pharisee who prayer-boasted: “God, thank you that I am not like other people”.  Recalling those days, if they were not numbered among “the Remnant” (just us select few), they were unworthy of compassion, God’s or ours.  That is historical Christianity gone wrong. Such dehumanization isn’t the Jesus who ignored artificial religious boundaries that forbade contact with lepers and detested non-Jews. And he healed the untouchables, like a Roman centurion’s servant, or a Gentile woman’s daughter. Still more serious, he “unlawfully” healed on the strictly-observed Sabbath day of rest. Even the dogs were to be fed from leftovers from his table. A God bereft of compassion is not worthy of my worship. He formed man from the dust of the ground, not from a pile of shit.

The late Rachel Held Evans mused, “I would hate to think that God creates disposable people”.  She believed in God’s promise to love each and every human being that has ever or will ever live, instead of what’s termed “limited atonement”. As Ms. Evans called it, unbelieving people who have real lives and real names were seen merely as “pond scum” in God’s eyes.  God only loves the precious few who win the Divine Lottery. Others – before they ever commit a single sin – are not afforded even a chance to be saved and are divinely auto-deleted. As one Calvinist professor explained, “Everything God does to or for the reprobate in this life is deliberately designed to prepare him or her for eternal damnation”.  It reminds me of a quote, perversely twisting the message of Jesus. It was uttered by a distinguished dean of theology about those who are not Christians just like him:

The other peoples of the world – Muslims, Buddhists, and those of other faiths, as well as those Christians not born again – do not concern Him.

And yet those people – over your backyard fence and all over the world – are searching for love. They’re rooting around for ultimate meaning. They are literally dying to see God as friend and lover. You know many like that, feeling devoid of any divine experience.

There are those who have learned to sing “hymns to an unknown God”; seekers who may never feel the spiritual need to get up on Sunday and attend a church. Some are church exiters, saying “I’M DONE” with oxygen-starved theology – especially with polarizing politics commingled with the Gospel. Others are nursing wounds after having been pushed under a busload of sanctimony. These may have given up not only on the institutional church, but also are resentful towards God, and will never again bow the knee. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the self-directed spiritual seekers, who have never knocked on a church door as the only hope for a lost world. God loves them, as well.

At the end of the day, Jesus did not come to construct systems competing for First Prize in the most correct theology. God will always know more than we do. Neither did he come not to organize a mega business/church that offers the best life – but only on our terms. Religion tends towards becoming sediments layered to reach God instead of a divinely-initiated encounter, exposing our hearts and souls to the mystery of being touched by him. Action-oriented “doings” primarily about what we do for Jesus, not about what He has done for us. This is Christless Christianity, as Michael Horton explains in his book of the same name, “our practices reveal that we are focused on ourselves and our activity more than on God and his saving work among us”. 

Good. I got that all out of my system. This blog, on the other hand, reflects my desire that all mankind let go of self and be enveloped by Christ’s grace, discovering the means by which we meet God.  I mean to say God really doesn’t hate you like others say. I’m grateful to have escaped the black hole of a retributive God to find a fresh vision of divine love. I invite all God-curious men and women into the true universe filled with the freely giving of the divine Self, which we call grace. Not only does God act in love, he awaits our love in return. Our proper response is the mystical experience known as faith, a heavenly wisdom superimposed over empirical knowledge, and extending well beyond. “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s house, for the new land that I will show you”, God told Abram and Sarah, saying “I will surely bless you”.  We all find ourselves needy and find it difficult to be truly at home with ourselves and at peace in the universe. God invites us to go beyond our own comfort zone and undertake a life pilgrimage to something infinitely better. God will move you quietly forward in grace as the time is right. It’s okay if you’re not yet ready to take that step in your emerging journey towards faith. Jesus said he didn’t come for the healthy, but for those who need a doctor.  The Physician is ready to see you now, but He also has a capacious Waiting Room.

“You Muslims must die!”

~ phroneticchristian ~ Leave a comment

Six year old Wadea Al-Fayoume was busy playing in his Chicago apartment, when the landlord barged in, raging “you Palestinians don’t deserve to live.” He then proceeded to kill the young boy – stabbing him 26 times. Writing for Religion News Service, Omar Suleiman asked “for what crime did Wadea Al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old in Chicago, die?”  Despite his saying that every Palestinian child is as worthy of a soul as any child around the world, one commenter had the “biblical” answer: “Wow, what do say, Omar, to the Israeli children who were beheaded or burned or kidnapped by your colleagues in Palestine?”

So much hate. So much misguided thinking that more hate will solve it.

At Wadea’s funeral, several Chicago rabbis received permission to stand with the boy’s community as they mourned this loss. “I can’t say that it was simple to be there’, said one. His family and synagogue have relatives suffering in Israel.  They knew some of the 1,300 Israelis killed thus far. “My entire community is in deep pain”.  And yet, there he stood, showing support for another heartbroken family, weeping along with hundreds of Islamic mourners.

“We bear a simple message for our neighbors. You are not alone,” the rabbi said.: Misery, it is said, loves company. It needs the comfort of company. From ones, who in their own hurt, have room in their own hearts bear up others’ pain, too. His was a simple – but risky – gesture born out of shalom. “At the end of the day, we’re all human beings,” he said. “At the end of the day, we have to find a way for our children to live together in peace.”

The killer and the rabbi: Which of the two did what his Father wanted?

N.B.- No Christians were moved to do likewise.

Return of the Christian Super Hawks

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Another war, another letter from Christian war hawk Richard Land. You may recall his 2002 open letter to President Bush stating his “Bible-believing”  scholarly imprimatur – grounded in scriptural authority. Sanctioning unilateral war against Iraq “fell well within the time-honored criteria of just-war theory.” The letter, co-signed by a bevy of right-wing, neo-fundamentalist leaders, granted the Bush government a theological dispensation to inflict divine punishment. “The question is not if God is on our side, but if we are on God’s side,” Richard Land was quoted as saying about the Iraq invasion. “Then, with a wink of the eye, Land added, ‘But I think God is on our side in this one.’”[i] Gott Mit Uns!

But as firstly envisioned within Catholic public theology, Just War was the last resort. Not a shallow checklist before launch; not a divine set of minimums to bless waging it. Evangelical misuse of  Just War theory conceals its double-speak behind lofty philosophical presuppositions.  Influential pastor Jack Hibbs speaks for many evangelicals when he declares it is unchristian to demand that Israel’s response to the attacks from Hamas be “proportional.”  To our shame, we really don’t mean what we say.

Any war becomes entangled in a moral morass once the tit-for-tat shooting starts. By then, its too late to play by Marquess of Queensberry rules. Especially concerning the inevitably targeted civilians and noncombatant casualties.  Even from those whose motives are spiritually clean, where going to war could not possibly have been anything else but pure. As any military commander can tell you, even the best of plans go out the window when combat begins. Truth, as we are often reminded, is the first casualty. Some 500 people died in the October 17th aerial attack that hit al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Each side blames the other. Whether by mistake (like the Mukaradeeb wedding massacre), or deliberately (like My Lai) innocent people are just as dead, whether Just War – or just a war. 

Theologian Walter Wink had this to say: “ Declaring a war ‘just’ is simply a ruse to rid ourselves of guilt… If we have killed, it is a sin, and only God can forgive us, not a propaganda apparatus that declares our dirty wars “just.” In fomenting war and political objectives, Christians have lost our orientation by doing the will of the demonic enemy within ourselves.”  As Walt Kelly’s Pogo says, “We have met the enemy, and he is us”.  

But we are seeking answers to the wrong question. We need to ask how to achieve the shalom of Just Peace, rather than tidying up messes caused by all our presumptive “just” wars. Even King David was barred by God from building the Temple because he “shed so much blood on the earth before Me”. (1 Chronicles 22:8). Despite doing what he thought was the Lord’s will, he was far from sinless in the process. We, proud and rebellious people that we are, often find ourselves in the same need for confession and forgiveness.

Sin. None of us are immune from its deceitful and predictable end in death. Not individuals, not nations – Jesus said there would be wars and rumors of war. But he also blessed the peacemakers. They will be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9). And yet, the naysayers dismiss Just Peace as “simply inappropriate to the realm of political life…  At the risk of oversimplification, their argument is that the condition of perfect peace and justice denoted by the term shalom can be brought about today and through human action”.  

Bible nay-sayers are war-mongers who search for scriptural “nails” on which to hang a war, contradicting what the Bible intends. Christians are those who promote God’s peace.. To become peacemakers, we must begin with ourselves. We are commissioned to teach the nations “to obey everything I have commanded you”. We are to pray “Thy will be done”, not ours. We are commissioned to inject the empires of politics with the new order of shalom inaugurated by the One of Peace.  The power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8) enables us to live out Jesus’ teachings on love and compassion, and achieve what otherwise seems humanly impossible.  

What can poor little me do???? Many individual small ways add up as we live out His mission of love .During my weekly grocery shop this week, my clerk was a displaced Ukrainian.  The woman behind me in line wore a hijab. I made it a point to say I was praying heart-broken prayers for each. Peace, said Mother Theresa, begins with a smile..That’s a start. Shalom begins with you and I:

Let there be peace on earth

And let it begin with me

Let There Be Peace on Earth

The peace that was meant to be

… With God as our Father

Brothers all are we

Let me walk with my brother

In perfect harmony.

… Let peace begin with me

Let this be the moment now.